Opinion | Cutting Medicaid would gut Michigan schools and hurt our kids

Within the tax yr 2024 alone, Michigan faculties acquired almost $ 170.5 million from Medicaid charges to help school-based companies, a big a part of which advantages college students who obtain particular schooling. These {dollars} don’t finance overhead; They go immediately to varsities, finance personnel positions corresponding to faculty nurses, counselors and therapists who serve within the entrance line of pupil well being and effectively -being.

Reducing Medicaid may have a Domino impact that forces faculties to eradicate important well being employees, academics, purchasers and different administrative employees (who’ve already thinly stretched) to fill inconceivable holes. Faculty districts can be pressured to make troublesome choices, corresponding to distracting cash from class instruction to attempt to make holes in well being care. The consequence? Each pupil loses – particularly those that want essentially the most help.

And let’s not overlook the broader picture. Medicaid is not only about faculties – it’s the spine of Michigan’s well being care system. One in 4 Michiganders depends upon Medicaid, as a result of it covers virtually half of all births within the state, helps tons of of hundreds of seniors and other people with disabilities and has virtually 1 million youngsters entry to preventive and routine care. The reducing of Medicaid would do greater than undermining well being care in our state; It might destabilize certainly one of Michigan’s largest financial sectors and blow a $ 2 billion hole within the state finances that Lansing merely can’t afford to satisfy.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t solely a budgetary concern – it is also an ethical one. Once we speak about reducing Medicaid, we aren’t speaking about cropping fats, we’re speaking about cuts that can hurt our most weak youngsters, neighbors, relations and buddies. In line with the Michigan Division of Well being and Human Companies, it has been proven that the Medicaid registration for kids will increase the extent of schooling and will increase wages in maturity. Michigan has constructed a robust, collaborative school-based Medicaid system. That is the time to guard and strengthen Medicaid, to not dismantle.

I urge members of the congress to think about that cutbacks on Medicaid are cuts on Michigan’s lecture rooms that affect the way forward for our youngsters. Our college students deserve higher. And we now have to battle as a state to guard our youngsters.